He Was Told to Fire Them All. He Kept Every Single One.
Carrie Connects™ | Show Recap | July 11, 2026
Today I sat down with Stanley Greene, president and CEO of Power Thinking Corporation, and I’m still thinking about one story he told.
Years ago he was sent into a struggling cable company and told to fire certain people. He kept them all. He didn’t bring in his own team. He just focused on the people he had. That company went from number 11 out of 13 to number 2 in a year and a half.
He didn’t do it by chasing numbers. He did it by believing every single person has an area where they’re absolutely excellent, and helping them find it.
That belief became Power Thinking.
Optimism Is a Skill You Can Build
Stanley is a positive psychology expert and co-founder of the Resiliency School of Japan, where he trains business leaders in Tokyo. His work is built on research from the University of Pennsylvania, and he’s brought it to leaders at Aflac, Merck, and Comcast.
Here’s the part that got me. Most of us get locked in on who we are by age eight. We decide what we can and can’t do, and we carry that story for the rest of our lives. Stanley says we could be totally wrong about who we can be.
He would know. He was once too shy to speak in front of more than four people. Today he trains executives on stages around the world. He built that courage one Toastmasters meeting at a time.
The Thinking Trap Most of Us Fall Into
One bad moment happens and suddenly the whole day was a loss. Sound familiar? Stanley calls that minimizing the positive and magnifying the negative, and it’s one of eight thinking traps his app helps people catch.
His fix is simple. Before bed, write down three good things that happened today. That one exercise, developed by Dr. Martin Seligman, challenges the story that your day was ruined because somebody cut you off on the road this morning.
Simple. Powerful. And backed by decades of research.
From Philly to Tokyo
My favorite part of the whole conversation was how Stanley ended up training leaders in Japan. It started with what looked like a setback. A CEO role that ended after just a few months. But that setback freed him up to focus on Power Thinking full time.
He sent one email to a mailing list. The director of the Japan Positive Psychology Association wrote back. His very first Power Thinking presentation was to Japan’s defense forces, with a translator by his side and one Japanese phrase in his pocket: good morning.
Sometimes our setbacks really are setting us up for a comeback.
What Companies Keep Getting Wrong
Stanley didn’t hold back on this one. Companies love to say people are their most important asset. Then they cut the people programs the moment the quarterly numbers get tight, calling them soft skills.
He proved decades ago that when you focus on the people, the numbers follow. Not the other way around.
Watch the Replay
The full conversation is above and there’s so much more in it, including the Power Thinking app, his daily 8 AM and 8 PM live sessions, and why he calls this work a movement.
Connect with Stanley Greene and check out the Power Thinking app. His links are
Connect with Stanley Greene:🌐 Website: https://powerthinkingcorp.com/ 💼 LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/stanleyhgreene📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1GYwZoaiDx/
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